Articles on PR for People

A Universal Needs Basic Guarantee

There is growing interest in the concept of providing a basic income to all adults, unconditionally. The idea is even being tried out in various places. The goal is to provide an income floor for everyone, including especially those who are living in poverty. However, this is a costly, and poorly targeted approach to the basic problem for every human society, namely, how to ensure the satisfaction of our basic biological needs, of which there some fourteen distinct categories. Here I will propose that we concentrate on ensuring the end – meeting our biological survival and reproductive needs -- rather than promoting an insufficient means.


Enough is Enough!

The right to life takes precedence over the right to bear arms. The Second Amendment to our Constitution should be repealed/replaced. Here is a proposal.


A Flawed New Dawn

David Graeber & David Wengrow’s 2021 book, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux), is a heavily documented (revisionist) history of humankind, but it is also surprisingly flawed.


Ayn Rand Shrugged:Time to Reject a Dangerous Doctrine

While Rand idealized the rich and powerful and endowed them with virtues they often don’t have, she was hostile to all the rest of society.  She opposed all welfare, all help for the poor, all infrastructure spending, and proposed that taxes be made voluntary.  


A New Social Contract for Our Endangered Species

As the evidence of our survival crisis continues to mount—with megadroughts, catastrophic floods, rampant wildfires, melting glaciers, devastating hurricanes and more—the word “denial” comes to mind. “Too little, too late” could very well become an epitaph for our endangered species.


“The Future Lies Ahead”

For a species that literally owes its remarkable evolutionary success over time to its social behavior and its many innovations (we have rightly been called “The Self-Made Man” by the anthropologist Jonathan Kingdon), we have been very slow to recognize, much less respond to what can fairly be called an existential survival crisis.  Some 99 percent of all the species that have ever evolved are now extinct. We may soon join them. Unless…


GREEN ROUNDUP - “The Future Lies Ahead”

For a species that literally owes its remarkable evolutionary success over time to its social behavior and its many innovations (we have rightly been called “The Self-Made Man” by the anthropologist Jonathan Kingdon), we have been very slow to recognize, much less respond to what can fairly be called an existential survival crisis.  Some 99 percent of all the species that have ever evolved are now extinct. We may soon join them. Unless…


We Need to Have a Demagogue Detector

To avoid future threats to our democracy, we should develop something like an earthquake early warning system.  Donald Trump could serve as our model. We have seen this movie several times before.   If we can learn to pick up the plotline from seeing the previews, maybe we can avoid having to watch this movie unfold again. Once upon a time, we were taught to be wary of snake oil salesmen, traveling medicine men, card sharks, and other charlatans.  We need to revive the lost art of distrust.


“Time Wounds All Heels!”

“Time Wounds All Heels!” This play on an old cliché says it all about Donald Trump’s likely future.  Here is just a peek at the legal mine-field and other sand traps that lie ahead for him.


Demagogues vs. (Small “d”) Democrats

Donald Trump has taught us an all-important civics lesson. Shame on us if we forget it and don’t act to prevent an encore.